Art21 viewings

After watching the mini-documentaries on these varied artists, I came much closer to a conclusion that I think I've been approaching for a while: that everyone is an artist, and art is a force that manifests itself in aesthetic and more or less tangible form; that rather than just the manifestation, it is the force. And this force courses through the individual who creates these pieces.  Thus the extremely varied takes and choices, the myriad works of what we call art.  For example, Vija Celmins is a painter who paints often repetitive scenes, often from nature, and many times over.  In the documentary she claims to have painted a shot of the night sky, with each and every star, about ten times or so.  She finds a challenge in the level of accuracy she can reach in her paintings.  I know that I'd probably soon go mad taking on a piece like that.  But she is compelled to paint these paintings, and this force inspires her.  Elizabeth Murray, also a painter, takes an almost opposite approach.  She begins with a vague sketch in her book, which is then made into a three dimensional composite of shapes.  It seems that the shapes retain their shape for the most part.  However, she seems to have little idea of how the shapes will be painted.  She just keeps painting it, changing it and changing until she reaches some sort of satisfaction and it's done, and the force compelling her to paint is sated.  Anne Hamilton works in the medium of cloth and film.  I really liked the analogy she drew about the cloth, that even when it is a giant woven fabric, you can still pick out each individual thread, and they are united.  I find her work to be especially poetic, as in the Myein installation in 1999 in the US Pavilion for the Venice bicentennial.  Each of her pieces tells a story, and even from piece to piece, this force of inspiration finds a different pathway through her heart.  Bruce Nauman seems to defy any categorization, in the conventional way, for he too seems to do whatever he may feel.  But that in and of itself is an expression of his soul, a manifestation of some unknown force inside.  Matthew Barney works primarily with film, and these films that he's made actually all flow into each other, and are all part of the same master work.  They are extremely strange, and extremely poetic, and an extremely unique vision all his own, that he is sharing with the world, through the manifestation of his art.